Presenters

Keynote Speakers

Capt. Paul Anthony Halladay is the United States Army Deputy Command Chaplain for the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan. A former United States Peace Corps volunteer, he has been a United States Army Chaplain since 2004.

E.C. Hurley, PhD, LMFT,, is the founder and executive director of Soldier Center in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he and his staff treat active duty military, veterans, and family members. A retired Army Colonel with more than 33 years of military service in United States Army and Reserve, Hurley also serves as the EMDR trainer for the Army Medical Department. soldier-center.com

Gabor Maté, MD,is a renowned physician and best-selling author whose books have been published in 20 languages internationally. His most recent book isIn the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Maté is an authority on mind-body approaches to treatment of addiction. His interests also include child development and mind-body unity in health and illness. drgabormate.com

Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD, an associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University, served in the United States Army as a military intelligence officer, leaving service with the rank of captain. She is creator of Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)® and founder of the Mind Fitness Training Institute. mind-fitness-training.org

Loree K. Sutton, MD, former brigadier general in the United States Army, was the highest ranking psychiatrist in the United States Army and is the former director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. She has also served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

Concurrent Workshop Presenters

Claude AnShin Thomas received numerous awards, including the Purple Heart, for his service in the Vietnam War. After struggling with reentry into society, Thomas studied mindfulness meditation with Thich Nhat Hanh. He was ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk in the Japanese Soto Zen Tradition by Baisen Tetsugen Roshi. He is author of At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace, and is founder of the Zaltho Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes nonviolence and change. zaltho.org

Beryl Bender Birch, a dedicated student of yoga and the study of consciousness since 1971, has been training yoga teachers as “spiritual revolutionaries” for nearly 30 years. Author of Yoga for Warriors, Power Yoga, Beyond Power Yoga, and Boomer Yoga, she is the director-founder of The Hard & The Soft Yoga Institute and a founder of the Give Back Yoga Foundation. power-yoga.com

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center, which provides comprehensive services to traumatized children and adults and their families at the main office in Brookline, Massachusetts. An internationally recognized leader in the field of psychological trauma, van der Kolk has been active as a clinician, researcher, and teacher in the area of post-traumatic stress and related phenomena since the 1970s. traumacenter.org

Laurie Leitch, PhD, cofounder of the Trauma Resource Institute, has been a practicing psychotherapist, clinical trainer, consultant, social entrepreneur, and researcher for more than 25 years. She is director of Threshold GlobalWorks, an organization dedicated to cultivating the social dimension of resilience in individuals and within communities, enterprises, and systems.